


Caffeine, Straight Up

by iamjustme



Series: Inside Their Heads [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Minor Character Death, Stilinski Family Feels, Triple Drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-20
Updated: 2014-10-20
Packaged: 2018-02-21 21:15:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2482748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iamjustme/pseuds/iamjustme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes a lot out of a person, being with their mother as she dies. It changes someone in the oddest, smallest ways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Caffeine, Straight Up

**Author's Note:**

> This may be the shortest complete thing I've ever written O.o

It takes a lot out of a person, being with their mother as she dies. It changes someone in the oddest, smallest ways. Everyone always talks about the big changes—the depression, the anger, the grief, and regret. No one ever talks about the coffee and the dreams.

Claudia died when Stiles was eight. He was just a boy. They were diagnosed together: frontotemporal dementia and ADHD. They took their meds twice a day at the same time. His little pill felt so small in her palm compared to her half dozen.

Figuring out Stiles’ dosage took longer than expected; the meds would only work some of the time. The nurses’ station offered free black coffee to the folks in the waiting room and Stiles often helped himself. They upped his Adderall dosage to make up the difference and told him to stop drinking it. Caffeine and Adderall don’t always mix well, but Stiles didn’t care. He didn’t sleep well anyway, and he liked the ritual of pouring the steaming liquid into the waxed paper cup. Stiles quickly realized that any stimulant is a good stimulant. Whatever kept him up, kept him focused. He needed to be awake—what if she needed him and he wasn't there.

His father, a deputy then, wasn't around as much as he would have liked to be. Between the medical bills and working under an aging sheriff, he had his plate full. He was there as often as he could be, but Stiles was there every day before and after school until his father came to collect him or Ms. McCall took him home with her and Scott.

Stiles can't handle plain black coffee anymore—hasn’t been able to for years now. He's learned to hide his caffeine away in sodas, pills, and prescriptions. He dreams of coffee, of watching his mother make sand castles with him at the beach, of the steady beep-beep of a heart monitor. All memories of her taste as stale and bitter as day old hospital coffee.

Stiles learned to cook when he was nine years old. He wasn’t about to let his father’s health get away from him like his mother’s did.


End file.
